Risk of Rain Followup

I JUST CAN'T STOP

Most of our reviews are done after about two or three hours of playing a game.  There are several reasons for this, the primary one being we're not getting paid so we're not about to sink ten hours into every game.  Another reason is that we, as lifelong video game enthusiasts (I refuse to call myself a "gamer"), we have the uncanny ability to gauge a game's overall quality at mach speed.  Our brains work at 600% efficiency due to our constant exposure to intense streams of information.  As a result we have to eat over 5000 calories each day just to keep our brains from atrophying.  If I haven't had a Snickers in a half hour I go into a hypoglycemic coma.

At the time of review I had indeed put about two hours into Risk of Rain.  My current count is 28, although I'd estimate three or four of those were spent idle.  The purpose of this followup is to give much more in-depth information on the game and to demonstrate that my power is unrelenting and unforgiving.  By which I mean that I did in fact assess this game's fun factor correctly.  Which I did!

I've since unlocked every class, most of the items, and almost all of the challenges.  I can say that everything I said in my review still holds true, but this game has far more depth - my favorite word - than I had originally assessed.  There are ten classes or characters or whatever you want to call them, and boy I had no idea when I said they all have different play styles.  I already mentioned the Commando with his assault rifling enemies from afar.  Acrid, a scary alien, cannot do damage at any appreciable distance.  His whole game is covering the floor with acid and spreading flesh-eating viruses to his enemies.  The Engineer lays mines and turrets while firing homing missiles into the sky.  They're all completely different and I actually don't like the game as certain characters like the Enforcer.  The four abilities that differentiate the characters really do change the entire game.

My first victory.  Such pride I had.

Like in Binding of Isaac, when you unlock an upgrade that simply means it can appear later.  You start the game with a collection of decent items, but many of the unlockables are just straight-up better than their stock brethren.  What this means for you is that you're almost forced into failure until you unlock and then acquire some of the better items.  I guess you could call it a mixed bag.  On the one hand your first 10 or so games are going to consist of you doing your best Sisyphus impression which is never fun, but on the other it gives a clear purpose to completing the games challenges and unlocking items.  This is especially true with the characters.  I've beaten the game five times now, zero of which were with the Commando.  He's just bad.  On the other hand once you unlock the Bandit or Sniper you'll find yourself seeing enemies as bags of money and experience rather than threats.  Moral of the story: do challenges.  All of them.  ALL OF THEM.

The randomly generated levels are actually a lot less random than I first thought.  The layout of any given level is always very similar.  The Hive, for example, always has a very long horizontal tunnel at the bottom followed by a thick layer of rock with chasms in it, then some floating platforms, then some thick gel-columns you can climb up, then the top layer of platforms.  It follows this pattern every single time.  What does change are various minutia scattered around the level.  Sometimes there will be a bridge between two platforms and sometimes there won't, or there might be a setpiece missing here or there.  I actually prefer it this way because entirely randomly generated levels tend to be...bad.  Risk of Rain's levels have the feeling of something that was crafted to be interesting rather than arbitrarily sequenced by a computer.  Plus I'd rather my focus be on playing the game than navigating a mazelike structure I've never seen before, especially in a timed game.

The beginning of the game is completely different from the end as well.  When I was a precocious youth I thought that rushing to the next level was the way to go, but it's not.  The first area is very sparsely populated with enemies that will quickly level you.  You want to kill as many as will allow you to get almost every item on the map and level up a few times, because as soon as you enter that teleporter things get much harder as the game introduces new enemies.  By the last level the game essentially becomes an enterprise in never staying still for one second because you'll die to the 20+ enemies swarming you at all times.  I'm not exaggerating.  The first time I made it to the last level I thought it was the most intense thing I've ever seen.  The next time I started a new game it seemed almost serene how little I had to worry about.  It's a fairly smooth transition between the two and it's a welcome one too.  Variety is the mice of life, after all.  Something like that anyway.

Here's a good example of how Zerg-y this game gets.  Yes, that says 139 enemies.

I can't think of anything else to add so I'll just stop this article abruptly.